Eco enzyme is a dark brown coloured solution obtained from the fermentation of food scraps (fruit and vegetables only), sugar and water. Eco enzyme is developed by Dr. Rosukon from Thailand who has been actively involved in enzyme research for over 30 years.

Benefits of Eco-Enzyme

There are many beneficial uses of eco-enzyme. You can use it as household and laundry cleaner, air purifier and organic fertilizer but most importantly, it’s really beneficial to the environment. You’re minimizing food waste by either using them to make eco enzyme or use them to make compost. Apart from that, using eco enzyme will prevent your needs to use chemical-based cleaners which pollute the river and surrounding eco-system.

It’s rather simple to make eco enzyme and I learned it early this year from my family. It was right before Chinese New Year so they collected tons of rotten mandarin oranges from the market for us to make the enzyme. I’m going to share with you here my first experience of making eco enzyme with my family.

What You Need

Get an air-tight plastic container. You would want to use containers made of Polypropylene. It has number 5 on it.

Water

Gather your fruits or vegetable scraps. These organic scraps are going to go through fermentation. It emits a pungent smell that’s unpleasant for most people. If the smell bothers you, it’s best you stick to certain fruits such as oranges, pineapples and lemons. It’s really up to you but I found citrus fruits, during and after fermentation, smells like wine. *winks*

Sugar (brown sugar, molasses or jaggery). You can get this from your local grocery stores.

Preparation

Here’s the table of the ratio needed to make eco-enzyme.

The Ratio of Making Eco Enzyme

Brown sugar, molasses or jaggery

1

300g

1kg

10 Kg

Fruits and vegetable scraps

3

900g

3kg

30 kg

Water

10

3kg

10kg

100 Litre

Depending on the size of your container, you can adjust it accordingly as long as the ratio is 1:3:10 as stated above. Also, please remember to leave some airspace for fermentation and do not fill up the entire container.

Getting Started

First of all, you can begin by mixing the sugar and water once you have measured all the ingredients. Stir the mixture with your hands until it’s properly mixed. Make sure you break the large chunks of the sugar as well.

Once it’s thoroughly mixed, you’ll see the water in dark brown. Next, you’re ready to put your food scraps in it.

In this case, we have only mandarin oranges. Some are more rotten than the others. It’s time to get your hands dirty!

Peeling the fruits into smaller pieces is not compulsory but it’ll help speed up the fermentation. If you’re uncomfortable to do this with your bare hands, you can wear gloves.

Finally, it’s ready after you’ve placed all the food scraps in it.

Close it well to make sure it’s air-tight. On top of that, you can also stick a paper with the preparation date and harvest date. You can extract the eco enzyme out after 3 months or leave it longer but at least a minimum of 3 months for a thorough fermentation.

For the first 2 weeks, you can open the cover and push the floating scraps downward and stir it a little to speed up the fermentation. At the same time, by opening the cover, you also release the pressure from the gas that’s building up in the container. This is to prevent rupture to your container. That’s why it’s NOT RECOMMENDED to use glass containers as it may pose danger if it explodes due to the pressure.

During the fermentation process, you’ll see a mouldy layer developed on the enzyme. Sometimes you may find worms in it. Don’t worry about it as you can just leave it. Eventually, the worms would have decomposed and become part of your enzyme after 3 months.

Harvesting Your Eco-Enzyme

Use a big sieve to filter out the dregs. Extract only the enzyme which is the dark brown water.

The dregs can either be re-used for your next fermentation or you can dry it and use it as organic fertilizer after adding them into your compost bin.

Storing Your Eco-Enzyme

Store your eco enzyme in plastic bottles. As I’ve mentioned earlier, you can use it as household and laundry cleaner or as organic fertilizer. If it’s too much for your own storage, you can choose to give it away to family and friends as a way to encourage them to use eco enzyme and lessen the usage of chemical based cleaners.

So that was my experience in making and harvesting eco enzyme. If you would like to find out more, you can visit Enzyme SOS website and read more about it. They also have the information in Bahasa Melayu and Mandarin.